Night of the Living Movie Critic

Runtime: 1 hr 55 min Director: Steven Spielberg Cast: Dee Wallace; Peter Coyote; Robert MacNaughton; Drew Barrymore; Henry Thomas Rating: PG This weekend, I drove to the nearest IMAX theater I could find and watched Steven Spielberg's beloved E.T. The Extraterrestrial for its 40th anniversary. It was the first time I had watched the film from start to finish since sixth grade. While I grew up immersed in plenty of '80s classics, E.T. was never a personal favorite. I had the VHS tape and would watch it occasionally, but it was never in heavy rotation at my house like Star Wars or Raiders of the Lost Ark . So after having maintained that distance from the film, I felt this was a perfect opportunity to see it with a more "objective" perspective, to see the movie on its terms, and imagine how an audience member might react to first seeing the film in 1982. I resolved to analyze the feature from a nuts and bolts perspective, breaking down the technical aspects like a me...

  Sonic the Hedgehog 2 Runtime: 2h 2m Director: Jeff Fowler Cast: Ben Schwartz, Jim Carrey, Idris Elba, James Marsden, Colleen O'Shaugnessey, Tika Sumpter Rating: PG In this sequel to the 2020 movie and adaptation of the classic video games, Dr. Robotnick (Jim Carrey) returns from deep space to claim revenge against the anthropomorphic speedster Sonic (voiced by Ben Schwartz), this time with an incredibly dim but strong ally in the form of Knuckles the Echidna (voiced by Idris Elba). Sonic must team up with his adoptive human family and new sidekick, Tails (Colleen O'Shaughnessey), to save the world.  Like many sequels, Sonic 2 buckles down on the perceived success of its predecessor while also reacting to its criticisms. While the first movie did its best to fit the Sonic character into a cookie-cutter kids' road trip movie and ground any element, this new installment crams as much lore and references from the games as possible. Sometimes these elements are unobtrusive a...

Runtime: 2hr 28 mins Director: Lana Wachowski Cast: Keanu Reeves, Carrie-Anne Moss, Yayha Abdul-Mateen II, Jessica Henwick, Jonathan Groff, Neil Patrick Harris Rating: R The Matrix: Resurrections is not content to be another retread in the 20 year nostalgia cycle that drives blockbuster remakes and continuations that currently dominate cineplexes. Neo is now back in the Matrix, believing he is video game designer Thomas Anderson. Neo, and the rest of the world, believe his story is just a video game trilogy he created. This leads to one of the best sequences of the film, where Neo ghost walks through the development of another sequel that parent company Warner Bros has forced him into. Eventually, Neo is liberated from the Matrix by a team of humans and good programs (called Sentience) who have been inspired by his story. In a lot of ways, Resurrections feels like an elaboration on the themes and ideas of the much maligned Matrix sequels. Those movies' big twist revolved arou...

Runtime: 2hr 30 mins Director: Guillermo del Toro Cast: Bradley Cooper, Rooney Mara, Cate Blanchet, Toni Collette, Willem Defoe, Ron Perlman Guillermo del Toro loves his monsters. He loves what they represent; the mysterious unknown filled with possibilities, or the wonderful people who are forced to live on the edge of civilization  because they were not born the way people wanted them to be. Conversely, del Toro is also distrustful of what we consider to be “normal” people. He sees past their physical beauty and shrinks away from the moral decay that drives them to maintain control and expel the helpless monsters. Guillermo del Toro has been telling the story about monsters fighting normal people throughout his career. From his early Spanish language films such as Pan’s Labyrinth , where the young Ophelia uses fantasy to escape her fascist authority figures, to blockbusters such as Hellboy whose titular hero is shunned by the humans he protects, to his Oscar winning The Shape o...

This review was originally written for naijanerds.com and posted there on Nov. 23, 2021 Dune has a reputation for being unadaptable. Frank Herbert’s seminal sci-fi epic has been subjected to multiple movie projects abandoned in pre-production, a 1984 film adaptation that infamously suffered from studio interference, and a middling Sy-Fy channel miniseries in the early 2000s.  The novel is a doorstop of a book and dense with worldbuilding and lore, but unlike The Lord of the Rings, a similarly lauded fantastical epic with a straightforward hero’s journey, Dune is an impenetrable study on the danger of charismatic leaders and the intricacies  of politics that does not translate into easily watchable fare for wider movie going audiences (remember how reviled the Star Wars prequels were upon release). Now director Dennis Villeneuve (Sicario, Arrival) steps up to give his spin on the source material. Taking advantage of an all star cast, he applies his signature style to one of sc...

 Runtime: 2hr 43 mins Director: Cary Joji Fukunaga Cast: Daniel Craig, Rami Malek, Lea Seydoux, Naomi Harris, Lashana Lynch, Ralph Fiennes, Jeffrey Wright It's funny how this franchise means so many things to different people. Bond movies have been coming out for over 50 years, and it's evolved in a unique way that invites comparison, debate, and generational divides. My father still considers Connery as the definitive 007. Meanwhile, I grew up with the moral ambiguity of Daniel Craig and think of Pierce Brosnan as my favorite take on a classical version of the character.  Then there are millennials and Generation Z kids who find the concept outdated, and see Bond himself as a walking monument to British Imperialism and toxic notions of manhood. The James Bond franchise at its worst often proves these critics right (it's uncomfortable how much casual assault is in those earlier movies) but the best Bond movies transcend these trappings by imbuing its hero with a much needed...

  Welcome to my new film blog! A little background about me. I studied film production and criticism in college and have been doing freelance writing online for the past year. This blog will be a space where I review new movies, return to older films that strike my interest, or talk about art and narrative in general. Of course, there is the underlying question of why start a film blog now? And I agree, that this was probably a tumultuous time to  buckle down on this blog. After all, everything about film is up in the air at the moment. Theatres are still trying to recover from the pandemic, while also continuing to compete with streaming. So the traditional model of movie exhibition and the theatre going experience is well past its golden age.  In addition, it feels like many people are distrustful of film critics. At least once month, I see someone complaining on social media how out of touch professional critics are, and point to the divide between Rotten Tomato's audi...